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DePaul’s Chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honors Society, is hosting a poetry open mic night with special guest Debra Bruce on Friday, May 31st from 6:00-8:00 p.m. in Arts & Letters Hall room 404. During the first hour, students are welcome to read their original works of poetry, no registration necessary. For the second half of the event, Debra Bruce will be reading from her recently published collection of poems, Survivor’s Picnic.

Debra Bruce’s fourth book of poetry, Survivors’ Picnic, is just out from Word Press/Word Tech Editions. Her previous collections include Pure Daughter and SuddenHunger, both from the University of Arkansas Press, and What Wind Will Do, from Miami University Press. She has published widely in journals including The Atlantic, Poetry, PrairieSchooner, Virginia Quarterly Review, and others.

Bruce’s writing has received the Carl Sandburg Poetry Award, as well as grants and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, Poetry Society of America, and Poetry magazine. She is a professor emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

The rich language of Debra Bruce’s Survivors’ Picnic—whether she’s meditating on cancer survival, describing the nervous colleagues of a transgendered secretary, or playfully satirizing a divorce support group—is sensual in its caress of the world, its music cascading into semi-formal free verse as well as sonnets, villanelles, and pantoums.

“Survivors Picnic is full of generous poems, their rifts loaded with ore. From pithy narratives to evocative lyrics, these are poems that can take us out of ourselves, by a poet who has learned her art, who knows that poetry is song at heart. Brava, Debra Bruce!”–Annie Finch

“Debra Bruce’s poetry is a secret treasure–to be discovered and read and re-read. Every lover of language can partake of Bruce’s passionate picnic.” — Molly Peacock

The Visiting Writers Series is excited to announce that their next reading will be by DePaul’s own Barrie Jean Borich. Please join them on Thursday, May 21st, at 6:00 p.m. in the Richardson Library room 115 to hear Borich read from and discuss her newest work, Body Geographic.

Barrie Jean Borich is the author of My Lesbian Husband, winner of the American Library Association Stonewall Book Award. Her new book, Body Geographic is published in the American Lives Series of the University of Nebraska Press. She’s the recipient of the 2010 Florida Review Editor’s Prize in the Essay and the 2010 Crab Orchard Review Literary Nonfiction Prize, and her work has been named Notable in Best American Essays and Best American Non-Required Reading. She was the first nonfiction editor of the Water~Stone Review and a longtime faculty member in the Creative Writing Programs at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is currently a member of the creative writing faculty of the English Department and the MA in Writing and Publishing program at Chicago’s DePaul University and splits her time between Minneapolis and Chicago.

One coordinate of Borich’s story is Chicago, the prototypical Great Lakes port city built by immigrants like her great-grandfather Big Petar, and the other is her own port of immigration, Minneapolis, the combined skylines of these two cities tattooed on Borich’s own back. Between Chicago and Minneapolis Borich maps her own Midwest, a true heartland in which she measures the distance between the dreams and realities of her own life, her family’s, and her fellow travelers’ in the endless American migration. Covering rough terrain—from the hardships of her immigrant ancestors to the travails of her often-drunk young self, longing to be madly awake in the world, from the changing demographics of midwestern cities to the personal transformations of coming out and living as a lesbian—Body Geographic is cartography of high literary order, plotting routes, real and imagined, and putting an alternate landscape on the map.

“Body Geographic is as astonishingly original as it is profoundly humane. Barrie Jean Borich writes of the body, the psyche, the land, and real life with a reach so grand and a mastery so definitive it clutches the heart. This is a beautiful, bold, blow-your-mind book.”–Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild

The Visiting Writers Program Welcomes author Gregory Martin to DePaul TOMORROW, Thursday, April 25th, at 6:00 p.m. in the Richardson Library room 115.

In his memoir Stories for Boys, Gregory Martin struggles to reconcile the father he thought he knew with a man who has just survived a suicide attempt; a man who had been having anonymous affairs with men throughout his thirty-nine years of marriage; and who now must begin his life as a gay man. At a tipping point in our national conversation about gender and sexuality, rights and acceptance, Stories for Boys is about a father and a son finding a way to build a new relationship with one another after years of suppression and denial are given air and light.

Martin’s memoir is quirky and compelling with its amateur photos and grab-bag social science and literary analyses. Gregory Martin explores the impact his father’s lifelong secrets have upon his life now as a husband and father of two young boys with humor and bracing candor. Stories for Boys is resonant with conflicting emotions and the complexities of family sympathy, and asks the questions: How well do we know the people that we think we know the best? And how much do we have to know in order to keep loving them?

“Stories for Boys is a magnetic meditation on what happens when a decades-long lie is brutally revealed. Moving, brave, and unforgettable, this deeply personal book pushes us all further into the light.”–Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild

Gregory Martin’s work has appeared in The Sun, The Kenyon Review Online, Creative Nonfiction, Storyquarterly, The Writer, Witness, and elsewhere. Stories for Boys (Hawthorne Books) was named a Discover Great New Writers selection by Barnes & Noble for Holiday 2012. Martin’s first book, Mountain City, received a Washington State Book Award, was named a New YorkTimes Notable Book. He is an Associate Professor of English at the University of New Mexico and serves as Director of UNM’s Combined BA/MD Degree Program. He lives in Albuquerque with his wife and two sons.

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The next English Department Career Panel is “How to Become a Publisher,” and it’s taking place on Monday, May 13th from 6:00-7:00 p.m. in Arts & Letters Hall room 109. Three Chicago publishers, Albert DeGenova, Wendy McClure, and Doug Siebold, will discuss their careers and their presses. Their presentations will be followed by a 30-minute Q&A.

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to hear from these three great industry professionals right here on campus.

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The literacy department at Open Books is looking for an intelligent, upbeat, and experienced education-aficionado to join their team as the nonprofit’s very first Teen Programs Manager.

Responsibilities include:

Overseeing the day-to-day operations of current teen programs

Assisting the literacy team in the development and implementation of new teen programs

Supervising a rotating group of talent, which may include a part-time Open Books Fellow and multiple Literacy Interns

Creating and executing ongoing strategies to recruit new school partners and scale program enrollment

Developing and maintaining effective relationships with schools, community groups, and other partners to further the Open Books mission

In Faculty News, we are excited to announce the upcoming release of Professor Ted Anton‘s new book, The Longevity Seekers: Science, Business and the Fountain of Youth, which will be released by the University of Chicago Press on May 1st, 2013.

In addition to The Longevity Seekers, Anton has written two other books, Bold Science: Seven Scientists Who Are Changing Our World (2001) and, Eros, Magic and the Murder of Professor Culianu (1996), and co-edited a collection called The New Science Journalist.

The Longevity Seekers is a nonfiction account of the scientific search for a longevity gene. From the press release:

People have searched for the fountain of youth everywhere from Bimini to St. Augustine. But for a steadfast group of scientists, the secret to a long life lies elsewhere: in the lowly lab worm. By changing the expression of just a few key genes, these scientists were able to lengthen worms’ lifespans up to ten-fold, while also controlling the onset of many of the physical problems that beset old age. As the global population ages, the potential impact of this discovery on society is vast—as is the potential for profit.

With The Longevity Seekers, science writer Ted Anton takes readers inside this tale that began with worms and branched out to snare innovative minds from California to Crete, investments from big biotech, and endorsements from TV personalities like Oprah and Dr. Oz. Some of the research was remarkable, such as the discovery of an enzyme in humans that stops cells from aging. And some, like an oft-cited study touting the compound resveratrol, found in red wine—proved highly controversial, igniting a science war over truth, credit, and potential profit. As the pace of discovery accelerated, so too did powerful personal rivalries and public fascination, driven by the hope that a longer, healthier life was right around the corner. Anton has spent years interviewing and working with the scientists at the frontier of longevity science, and this book offers a behind-the-scenes look at the state-of-the-art research and the impact it might have on global public health, society, and even our friends and family.

With spectacular science and an unforgettable cast of characters, The Longevity Seekers has all the elements of a great story and sheds light on discoveries that could fundamentally reshape human life.

“If live to be 150 — and thanks to Ted Anton I now know how – I doubt I will ever read a book about the
science of aging as enthralling as The Longevity Seekers.” John Seabrook, New Yorker

“Research, money, and ego are the basic ingredients in the modern day quest to live longer—or forever. Ted Anton takes us into the laboratories and boardrooms in the worldwide competition for longevity, and with expertise and wit tells a wondrous story of contemporary science.” Daniel S. Greenberg, author of Science for Sale

Although The Longevity Seekers doesn’t hit the shelves until May 1st, the DePaul community has a special chance to hear Anton read from the book TONIGHT. Please join Prof. Anton and the Visiting Writers Program on Monday, April 8th at 6:00 pm in the Richardson Library room 115 for this event, which is free and open to the public. You can see the details and the event flyer in this previous post.

Anton will be doing another reading event for The Longevity Seekers in May at DePaul’s Loop campus. Please check back with Ex Libris to find out when the date, time, and location of this reading are announced.

The Visiting Writers Program has two exciting on-campus readings taking place this week.

On this Thursday, April 4th, poet Jay Baron Nicorvo will be reading from his book Deadbeat at 6:00 p.m. in room 115 of the Richardson Library. You can read the complete details on our previous post.

On Monday, April 8th, the Visiting Writers Program will host a reading with DePaul’s own Prof. Ted Anton. Anton will be reading from his new book, The Longevity Seekers, at 6:00 p.m. in room 115 of the Richardson Library.

Anton has spent years interviewing and working with scientists at the frontier of longevity science, and his book offers a behind-the-scenes look at their state-of-the-art research and the impact it might have on global health, society, and even our friends and family. Brenda Fowler, author of Iceman, describes The Longevity Seekers as, “A lively and at times humorous account of the search for the ‘longevity genes,’ told from the perspective of the pioneers in the field. Anyone with an interest in the new science of aging or the ways in which business and the media influence science is sure to enjoy this book.”

All Visiting Writers Series events are free and open to the public. We hope to see you there!

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Youth Organizations Umbrella (Y.O.U.), a Chicago-area youth development agency that provides services and leadership to meet the emerging needs of young people by offering free after-school enrichment, mentoring, clinical counseling, and crisis intervention to more than 850 low-income youth annually, is pleased to announce its Inspire Fellows Program for the summer of 2013. The fellowship offers graduate and upper-undergraduate students a full-time opportunity to learn best-practices in youth development and to prepare for a career in youth development, education, or the non-profit sector.

Inspire Fellows serve as workshop leaders and counselors for Y.O.U.’s 9-week summer program. Fellows are chosen to develop and facilitate specific workshops in one of three areas: arts and literature, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), or recreational activities. Additionally, all fellows help lead discussions and workshops on life skills topics.

Primary responsibilities of Inspire Fellows include:

Develop and facilitate youth activities in your chosen area that promote academic, social, and emotional development

Nurture supportive relationships with parents, school administrators, teachers, students, and community representatives

Develop and maintain good working relationships with supervisors, coworkers, and volunteers within Y.O.U., and with others in the community who offer information about, resources for, or services to young people in Evanston

Identify and recommend opportunities for continuous improvement in Y.O.U. programming

The Fellowship experience offers a unique opportunity for growth for students thinking about a career in youth development, education, the arts, or non-profits. Fellows have close supervision of their work and are provided with both formal and informal feedback to help them grow. In this way, fellows develop their leadership skills, enhance their understanding of youth development, and build their non-profit management skills.

The Fellowship runs full time from June 10 through August 16. The first week offers Fellows a comprehensive orientation and training on Y.O.U., non-profit management, and positive youth development. The next nine weeks consist of high-impact summer programming.

The Fellowship offers a stipend of $1,000. (Y.O.U. is also glad to provide documentation to any students who receive support from their universities for summer employment with a non-profit organization).

The Visiting Writers Series would like to invite you to their next on-campus reading. Jay Baron Nicorvo will be reading from and discussing his debut poetry collection, Deadbeat, on Thursday, April 4th, at 6:00 p.m. in the Richardson Library room 115.

Nicorvo’s debut collection, Deadbeat, revolves around a central character of the same name—descendant of John Berryman’s Mr. Bones, Marvin Bell’s Dead Man and Ted Hughes’ Crow, to name an irrepressible few. Nicorvo’s compassionate yet relentless portrait—of Deadbeat, an absent father and husband, and the family that goes on without him—weaves together a domestic narrative in which we witness Deadbeat muddle through courtship, marriage, estrangement, divorce, and, of course, fatherhood.

The book opens at a child support hearing— “Take a good look at your future,” the mother tells the young boy—and the poems that follow careen back and forth in time chronicling a downtrodden life, from the courtroom to the budding romance between Deadbeat and his bride to Deadbeat’s grown son and his own child. “What’s all this about love / when need strikes first fires,” we are asked, while layer upon complex layer is added to what we think we know about Deadbeat. Calling upon other well-known figures as in-absentia fathers—far-flung Odysseus, President Obama’s father, and even God in the poem “Deadbeat on High”—Nicorvo allows us to glimpse, with a surprising tenderness, the humanness of this man who “stripped the screw holding heaven together” and “mistook the window / for the world.” An effigy for America and our

Jay Baron Nicorvo’s poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and criticism have appeared in The Literary Review, Guernica, The Iowa Review, and The Believer. Four Way Books published his debut poetry collection, Deadbeat. He’s served on editorial staffs at Ploughshares and at PEN America, the literary magazine of the PEN American Center, and worked for the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. He teaches at Western Michigan University where he’s faculty adviser to Third Coast, and he lives on an old farm outside Battle Creek with his wife, Thisbe Nissen, their son, Sonne, and a dozen vulnerable chickens.

All Visiting Writers Series events are free and open to the public.

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In Faculty News: Please join the DePaul English Department in congratulating Amina Gautier on her receipt of a William Randolph Hearst Foundation Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) in Worcester, Mass. The AAS is one of the nation’s foremost research libraries for American history, literature, and culture through 1876. The Hearst Foundation Fellowship provides support for writers, performers, and artists to do research for their creative projects in the AAS’s collections. Prof. Gautier is currently at the AAS conducting research for a historical novel titled Band of Gideon about three black female members of Gideon’s Band, a group of Northern idealist seminary students, school teachers, and abolitionists who traveled south to help slaves on the South Carolina Sea Islands.

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Willow Books, the literary imprint of Aquarius Press, in Partnership with the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University is hosting the Second Annual Willow Books LitFest on Saturday, April 6th, 2013, from 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at Chicago State University.

The Willow Books LitFest is not only a chance to network and commune with your fellow writers, it’s a chance to celebrate all that is great about literature. Work with top writers in the field, make connections and hone your craft.

Opportunities at the Willow Books LitFest will include workshops, networking, a book fair, manuscript sessions, panel discussions, public readings, an open mic, and the Willow Books Literature Awards finalists’ reading and ceremony.

Kelly Norman Ellis, Director of the MFA Program at Chicago State University will be available to meet with prospective students, and DePaul MAWP alumnus Zhanna Vaynberg will be holding manuscript sessions.

Most events are free and open to the public but require registration, as seats are filling quickly. To register, download the registration packet at willowlit.net/willow-books-litfest. You can also download a complete schedule of the day’s events at the same site.

The DePaul Visiting Writers’ Series is excited to announce that nonfiction writer Jen Percy will be doing a reading at DePaul on February 20th at 6 p.m. in Richardson 115. Percy will be reading from her upcoming nonfiction novel Demon Camp, which begins with the story of a Special Ops soldier who believes his PTSD is caused by demons, but becomes about the author’s obsession with the strange and mesmerizing world she encounters. Here is the description from the Visiting Writers’ Series coordinator, Prof. Rebecca Johns-Trissler:

Rising star alert! Jen Percy spent three years with a group of Christians in rural Georgia who performs exorcisms on the traumatized. Percy was brought to them by a special Ops soldier just back from Afghanistan, the lone survivor of his unit, which was lost during Operation Redwings. He returned to Georgia and, struggling with PTSD and unable to integrate back into civilian life, considered suicide, until—as a last resort—he underwent an exorcism. After experiencing relief, he set out on a mission to bring soldiers from across America to Georgia for a similar deliverance.

In the tradition of Dennis Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain, Demon Camp is the strange and riveting tale of Percy’s journey into a world she is fascinated by, suspicious of, sympathetic to, and a world she becomes a part of. As she struggles to understand this soldier’s homecoming she crosses the line between journalist and participant, becoming exorcised herself.

This is a book about being haunted; about the demons in and outside of us. It is about a soldier looking for atonement in a world that is offering none; an agnostic who is obsessed with an exorcist. It is a mesmerizing account of how people reconcile faith and trauma and a brilliant and passionate work that heralds the arrival of a brave, new talent.

This event is free and open to the public.

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All students are invited to attend the next event in the DePaul Humanities Center‘s ’12-’13 series exploring Nostalgia and the Age of the Enlightenment. “The Problem of the Past in English Socialism” will be presented by Alastair Bonnett on Thursday, February 28th, at 6:00 p.m., McGowan South, room 104 (please note that this is an updated time and location than originally advertised).

Recent years have seen a numerous explorations of the nostalgic content of socialism and other nineteenth century radical traditions. Returning to this disputed territory through the political thinking of Thomas Spence (1750-1814)–one of the putative founders of the English socialist tradition–Bonnett will describe and discuss the invention of Spence as an anti-nostalgic working-class revolutionary hero by late Victorian radicals. This ‘invention’ is introduced as an episode in a struggle over the place of the past in socialism. It was a struggle which the modernisers won, pushing ‘conservative radicals’ like William Morris or Robert Blatchford to the edges of the debate, and ensuring that the nostalgic content found in Spence was ignored. Bonnett will also make a case for Spence as a political actor who must be judged in his own terms. His insistence that politics is about having ‘plans’ for the future, and a yearning sense of loss for the land and old freedoms suggest he is best understood as a utopian. However, the fact that the British Parliament made gatherings of ‘Spenceans’ illegal in 1817 indicates that his ideas may have had at least some popular support.

Alastair Bonnett is Professor of Social Geography in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University (UK). He is the author of Left in the Past: Radicalism and the Politics of Nostalgia (Continuum, 2010) and The Idea of the West: Politics, Culture and History (Macmillan, 2004), and White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives (Longman, 1999). Bonnett has also written extensively on psychogeography and the geographical avant-garde, and runs a web site about Thomas Spence: thomas-spence-society.co.uk.

Believe it or not, next week begins the month of October, and once again, there are tons of great literary events happening on and around campus. Grab your calendars, and we’ll see you there!

One Book One Chicago at Depaul- Oct. 2nd and 10th

Every year, the city of Chicago and Chicago Public Libraries host a series of events for the One Book, One Chicago (OBOC) program, an “opportunity to engage and enlighten our residents, foster a sense of community and create a culture of reading in our city.” DePaul University is proud to be the host of two OBOC events this October:

The Book Thiefand the History of Reading
Tuesday, October 2nd, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
DePaul University, Lincoln Park Campus
Arts and Letters Hall, Room 207
2315 N. Kenmore Avenue
For The Book Thief’s Liesel Meminger, reading is a means of both resistance and reconciliation. With attention to literature’s changing material and interpretive practices, DePaul faculty—Jenny Conary and Marcy Dinius, English; Lisa Z. Sigel, History; and Traci Schlesinger, Sociology—discuss what it has meant to be a reader in different times and places, from early modern Europe to today. Sponsored by DePaul University’sDepartment of English.

The Book as Object
Wednesday, October 10th, 7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
DePaul University, Lincoln Park Campus
John T. Richardson Library, Room 400
2350 N. Kenmore Avenue
A book exists as more than just a vessel for the written word—it’s an artwork, a collectible and, of course, a target for thieves. Join librarian Kathryn DeGraff and artist Matthew Girson, along with cultural critic Rachel Shteir, author of The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting, as they discuss various personal and cultural ways of experiencing The Book beyond reading. Sponsored by DePaul University’s Department of English.

To find out more about OBOC, this year’s selection, and other events around the city, visit the official OBOC events page. All OBOC events are free and open to the public.

Rose Metal Press Flash Nonfiction Reading- Sept. 28th

Rose Metal Press, co-founded by the DePaul English Department’s Kathleen Rooney, will be celebrating the release of their new book The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction, which “features 26 eminent writers, editors, and teachers offering expert analysis, focused exercises, and helpful examples of what make the brief essay form such a perfect medium for experimentation, insight, and illumination” with a reading this Friday, September 28th.

The reading will take place at The Book Cellar, located at 4736-38 N Lincoln Ave., and will feature readings by new DePaul faculty member Barrie Jean Borich, as well as Phillip Graham, Jenny Boully and Sue William Silverman, who are all featured in the collection. This event is free and open to the public. See the event page for more information.

DePaul Humanities Center Presents: Indigenous Poetry- Oct. 4th

The DePaul Humanities Center invites everyone to join them at the opening event for the Humanities Center’s New Voices in the Humanities series on Thursday, October 4th, 2012 at 6:00 p.m. in room 314 of the DePaul Student Center (a reception will precede at 5:30 pm) for an evening of poetry and discussion with three of North America’s most exciting young Indigenous poets.

Natalie Diaz, Santee Frazier, and Orlando White will read selections from their poetry, followed by a discussion and audience Q&A moderated by DePaul Professor Mark Turcotte, exploring ways in which the poets’ Native beliefs and traditions influence and are expressed in their art.

Click on the poster to read more about this event and its three featured poets.

The second event in the DePaul Visiting Writer’s Series features Phong Nguyen and Michael Nye and is entitled “Writer as Editor/Editor as Writer” and it takes place on Friday October 5th from 11:30 AM-1:30 PM in Room 115 of the Richardson Library. Lunch will be served.

Please click on the poster for more information about the two featured writers and their upcoming conversation.

Chicago author and DePaul Visiting Professor Mahmoud Saeed, a native of Iraq, will discuss his novel The World Through the Eyes of Angels, in a Society of Midland Authors program Oct. 9th at the Cliff Dwellers Club, along with one of his translators, Allen Salter of Chicago.

Saeed has written more than 20 novels and short story collections, starting with “Port Saeed and Other Stories” in 1963. That same year, Iraq’s first military-Baathist government seized two of his novels and imprisoned him for a year. After being incarcerated six times, Saeed left Iraq in 1985. He has lived in the United States since 1999, and he now teaches Arabic and Arabic culture at DePaul University.

Salter has lived and traveled in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. He has worked as a teacher and translator. Under the pseudonyms Sam Reaves and Dominic Martell, he has published 10 novels.

They will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9, at the Cliff Dwellers Club, 200 S. Michigan Ave., 22nd floor, Chicago. A social hour, with complimentary snacks and a cash bar, begins at 6 p.m. Reservations are not required. Admission is free, but the Society will accept donations to defray the cost of programs. For more information, see www.midlandauthors.com.